I'm pretty sure Manitoulin is the big island, and the smaller island is in one of the lakes on Manitoulin island. Although I believe there are at least two lakes with smaller islands inside them so I'm not sure which one this fact is referring too.

No ketchup, dill pickle, all dressed or hickory sticks. Edit: Ok ok... some parts of the US are lucky enough to get some flavo(u)rs. Dill pickle is available in some parts of Cali for instance but it isn't common and definitely not the canonical version: Lays. You hear me Lays? Do it!

Canada basically got its name by mistake. When Jaques Cartier, a French explorer, came to the new world, he met with local Natives who invited them to their ‘kanata’ (the word for ‘village’). The party mistakenly thought the name of the country was “Kanata” or Canada.

Rush, Guess who, Bryan Adams, David Wilcox, Tragically Hip and Kim Mitchell. I also believe if any foreign artists recorded here it is considered Canadian content don't quote me on this but I believe Lenny Kravitz is on that list.

Wow. I remember reading about the Northwest Territory when I was a kid and being blown away by how gigantic it was, and how few people lived there. Never knew it had been split up...and that it happened 15 years ago.

What's really incredible is that when you add together the areas of Nunavut, The Northwest Territory, and The Yukon, it exceeds the entire area of the United States, but the total population of all 3 is less than 200,000...Alaska has over 700,000 and is only 1/5 of the land area.

To this point: HBC still enjoys its place as one of Canada's central, instantly recognizable brands. I don't know anyone who wouldn't want one of those blankets somewhere in their lives, nor anyone who actually has no use for the Bay.

The southernmost point of Canada, Point Pelee, is approximately at the 42 parallel. This is the same latitude as the northern boarders of California and Nevada in the United States and the same latitude as Rome in Italy.

Edit: Southernmost mainland point. As /u/RhinoKart points out, there are actually islands even further south off of Point Pelee, most southerly being Middle Island. 27 American States have a point that is further north than Middle Island.

ACTUALLY the southernmost point in Canada is Middle island, just south of Pelee island in lake Erie. It was used as a stop point for rum runners during prohibition in the USA. Nobody lives there now though so it's often forgotten.

A bear cub named Winnipeg was exported from Canada to the London Zoo in 1915. A little boy named Christopher Robin Milne loved to visit Winnipeg (or Winnie for short) and his love for the bear cub inspired the stories written by his father, A.A. Milne, about Winnie-the-Pooh.

There is a highway in Ontario known as the "Highway of Heroes" as the road is traveled by funeral convoys for fallen Canadian Forces personnel from CFB Trenton to the coroner's office in Toronto. Source

Alert, Nunavut. The Northernmost permanent outpost on the planet. By far most of the year occurs in either complete darkness or total sunlight. The two periods between summer and winter in which twilight occurs last about a month each. Fascinating place!

Canadian hockey, from the ages 5 to 14, is used to weed out the slow and weak male children from the pack. Every boy that attempts hockey and is unable to progress to junior-level hockey is put on an ice floe and pushed out to sea.

That's why there aren't any "bad" Canadian hockey players aged 15 and older, and also explains our domination in the sport.

One of my ex-girlfriends uncles was in the RCMP and was constantly undercover because he looked like a straight up bad ass. He would even do lengthy jail terms, being placed in the same cell as someone the RCMP was trying to get information or a confession from. He had lots of crazy stories.

I thought meeting her parents was stressful until I met him and he started telling me about all the background checks he was going to run on me.

There is one road which connects Eastern and Western Canada. It has one lane in each direction (for the most part), and a speed limit of 90 kilometers per hour. If you want to travel from Ontario to Manitoba and stay within Canada, you need to take this road, or find a plane or train. For a country that spans a continent, boarders three oceans, has one of the largest economies in the world and hosts a population of 35 million people, this fact astounds me.

Edit: Apparently, this has confused many people. I'm referring to Highway 17, as it runs west of Kenora, past the junction to the 17A. Jesus people, look at a map.

At one point in time, the Hudson's Bay Company owned most of Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and a bit of Nunavut for good measure. This would come to be known as Rupert's Land. If it were not for the purchase of Rupert's Land, Canada probably wouldn't exist in the united form it does today.

The 401 in Ontario is the busiest and most traveled highway in the world. I think it is 5 or 6 lanes wide on each side making it 10 or 12 lanes wide total and there is still massively bumper to bumper traffic all day mostly in around the GTA.

As a bilingual country, Canada has two versions of its national anthem, one in French and one in English. However, in both languages, the anthem starts with the words "O Canada" and ends with the presentation of the game's starting goaltenders and referees.

Here in Alberta alone, we have the beautiful Rocky Mountains on the border with BC, and 3 hours to the east are the canyons of the Canadian Badlands. Quite a contrast going from snow covered peaks to desert-like valleys in such a short drive.

There has only been one occasion on which a foreign flag has flown over the Canadian Parliament.

On January 19th 1943 the Dutch flag flew atop the Peace Tower to commemorate the birth of Princess Margaret of the Netherlands who was born in Ottawa Civic Hospital, the ward had been temporarily designated Dutch territory so the Princess would have Dutch citizenship and would remain in line for the throne.

You fucking Canadians are awesome. I love you and your country and really really want to go sometime in the future.

It is amazing a entire population of the second largest country (about 9 million km2 ) can be fit into a city about 10 thousand km2. I also wonder how Japan able to keep its population from collapsing into a black hole

I don't know if it's true or not any more (thanks to our evil, robot, overlord) but Canada used to be a HUGE hub for environmental and archaeological research. Environmental because we had both the widest variety of ecosystems in the world (that might still be true actually) and because we had the largest forested area outside of the South American rain forests.

Also, Canada hosts the world's smallest desert. It's in the Yukon.

Sadly, with all the axing that Harper has done to our research facilities and personnel, we've fallen WAAAAAY behind. It makes me fairly sad

You'd be suprised by the amount of progress Canada has made in efforts to help preserve what environment we tear up for exploration and extraction of resources. Lot of hate gets thrown in the way of Canada.. Northern Alberta specifically but people should check out Cody in Calgary big advocate for the oil industry. Take it as you will but both sides need to come to light.

In grade school were taught that Ottawa was chosen as the capital because its on the border of Quebec and Ontario (then Lower and Upper Canada). While this is partly true Ottawa was chosen mostly because its swampy, craggy and surrounded (then) by a really dense forest. It would have been ridiculously hard to invade by the U.S. this is also why the Parliament building is built on a cliff.

The company Blackberry started in Waterloo, Ontario. In addition, we also have an EA office and a Google office. Waterloo also has two of the best universities in the country, the University of Waterloo and Wilfred Laurier University.

During WWII, we temporarily declared a maternity ward in Ottawa international territory, so that the Dutch princess would inherit her parents dutch citizenship. After the war, the Dutch thanked us by sending 100,000 tulip bulbs. It is now known as the (Canadian tulip festival)[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Tulip_Festival]